


to hold the moonlight in your hands

by jjokkiri



Category: UP10TION
Genre: Childhood Friends, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Hwanhee And Minsoo Are Mentioned Several Times, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:07:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26511892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjokkiri/pseuds/jjokkiri
Summary: Maybe in retrospect, Jinwook’s proposal has been 20 years in the making, but Sooil still beats him to the punch line.
Relationships: Kim Jinwook | Jinhoo/No Sooil | Kuhn
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	to hold the moonlight in your hands

The television is turned down so low, the dialogue in the late-night drama can barely be heard over the static of the old television. It’s dark in their living room and Jinwook is resting his head comfortably in Sooil’s lap. It’s peaceful like this—they always spend their Friday nights like this.

It’s quiet, but they’re more focused on spending time in one another’s presence than they are focused on watching the drama. And though they aren’t _really_ watching the drama, it’s a tradition they don’t want to break. Ending a long, tiring week of working in one another’s arms feels like something they deserve to have.

It’s something they decided without ever discussing. Friday nights simply meant falling on one another on the sofa, watching reruns of late-night dramas until they’re tired enough to go to bed—and whoever washes the dishes after dinner gets to lay down in the other’s lap.

Nothing ever feels wrong when Jinwook is with Sooil, but this feels right.

Jinwook washed the dishes, so he gets the chance to lay down on the sofa in Sooil’s lap. And Sooil’s fingers are laced in Jinwook’s hair, absently toying with the dark strands—he doesn’t even seem to realize that he’s doing it, it’s just so natural. It’s comfortable like this.

“Hey,” Sooil whispers. When he speaks, his voice is so quiet that Jinwook might not have heard it if he were focused on the drama playing on the television. If he spoke any quieter, his voice might have been drowned out by the sound of the drama. But, Jinwook isn’t that focused on the drama—Sooil’s voice catches his attention.

Sooil’s eyes are focused on the television and Jinwook doesn’t meet his eyes when he looks up.

Jinwook hums quietly. He asks, “What is it?”

Sooil’s fingers suddenly stop moving. He hesitates for a brief second before he lowers his eyes to meet with Jinwook’s. There’s something soft in his eyes that feels like a heart-fluttering arrow straight to his chest. Jinwook stares up at him, waiting for him to speak.

“Marry me,” Sooil says. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

Jinwook pauses.

“Just like that?” he asks, “You’re going to ask me like that? Here?”

“No?” Sooil looks back at the television. There is a playful smile on his lips. He shrugs his shoulders—too nonchalantly in Jinwook’s opinion, but he knows Sooil. He’s always like this, steadfast and unwavering. “It’s okay if you don’t want to. You can forget that I asked.”

Jinwook furrows his eyebrows. He frowns, “It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just that…”

Sooil raises an eyebrow. He looks amused.

“It’s just what?”

Jinwook huffs.

He reaches over Sooil to open the drawer of the end table and fishes out a blue, velvet box. He places it into Sooil’s lap and scrunches up his nose at him. He feels childish about it. “It’s just this.”

Sooil laughs. He picks up the box and opens it with careful hands. The silver band in the box glimmers under the light, reflecting the dim light of the television.

It doesn’t feel special enough, but Sooil’s eyes are bright and Jinwook feels his heart fluttering in his chest. It’s amazing, the way that his heart still jumps when Sooil smiles. It’s amazing that his feelings only seem to get stronger as time flows by them.

The smile on Sooil’s lips almost turns shy.

“What’s this?” he asks.

It’s so lighthearted and casual that Jinwook almost wants to kick him for it. He almost wants to thrash his legs on the sofa and whine at Sooil, but there’s something in Sooil’s voice that sounds so gentle, so delicate. It sounds like a note of pleasant surprise. His eyes soften when he looks at the way the ring glints in the box, admiring, and Jinwook can’t be mad at him—he can never be mad at Sooil for too long.

But he huffs, feeling too childish for being upset that Sooil beat him to proposing, especially when he didn’t have anything prepared. It’s childish, it really is. But Jinwook has been planning his proposal for _months_.

Suddenly, Jinwook remembers Minsoo’s vague warning that waiting for the right moment might end up making him too late to win the race. He decides that he doesn’t like that Minsoo is right when this is about taking the next step in his relationship with Sooil.

It all melts away when Sooil’s eyes meet with his, soft and warm. He _can’t_ be upset.

“What do you mean _‘what’s this?’_ ” Jinwook asks. There isn’t any venom in his voice. It falls from his lips so fondly. He sighs, “I wanted to ask you to marry me first, you idiot.”

“You did?”

Jinwook pouts at him. “You ruined my surprise.”

Sooil leans back against the sofa and grins. He tilts his head and brushes Jinwook’s fringe away from his eyes. He looks down at him with soft, fond eyes. It’s the look that has tiny little stars bursting in Jinwook’s heart, prickling him with the warmth of Sooil’s affection. _It’s so warm._

He can’t look away.

Sooil whispers, “Does it change the fact that you want to marry me?”

_It doesn’t._

* * *

_‘Who cares who asked first?’_

That’s what Hwanhee asked when Sooil flaunted his engagement ring at the very next dinner party at Minsoo’s house. Yein gasped in excitement and rushed towards Sooil to examine the band around his finger, quickly followed by his boyfriend and the rest of their friends. Jinwook had stayed seated across from Sooil, watching. Hwanhee stuck by his side and he had concluded that Jinwook shouldn’t be pouting about it because didn’t _need_ to care who asked first because Sooil had a ring on his finger and they were getting married.

And honestly, Hwanhee was right.

Hwanhee was right, but Hwanhee didn’t understand why Jinwook was so insistent that he needed to set the perfect mood to propose to the love of his life. Hwanhee doesn’t understand anything, though.

But what’s important is that Jinwook thinks, in retrospect, he might have been the first to ask anyway.

* * *

“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Sooil,” Jinwook lays down against the sofa in their shared apartment and laughs when Sooil slides a bowl of soup onto the coffee table in front of him.

It’s the night after Jinwook got his exam results back. He didn’t do as well as he was hoping—he didn’t do very well at all. It feels terrible because they were important exams.

 _He_ feels terrible.

Yesterday night, as soon as he returned from the university, he immediately rushed to his bed and locked the door of his bedroom to be alone. He heard Sooil knock on the door several times during the night, but he never answered. He pretended to be asleep.

Now, he looked just as terrible as he did last night, but this time, his best friend is there with him; supportive and sweet. Sooil might not be able to make him pass an exam, but at the very least he can make him something to eat.

Sooil rolls his eyes and falls onto the sofa right next to him. He leans his head against Jinwook’s shoulder.

“Just eat,” he says. “Tell me if it sucks.”

Jinwook picks up the spoon and taps the rounded edge against the tip of Sooil’s nose.

“Nothing you make can be bad,” he says. “You’ve been husband material since day one.”

Sooil swats at him.

“You’re too much,” he says, “you don’t need to flatter me for me to do things for you. I’d do anything for you without you asking for it. Don’t suck up to me.”

Jinwook grins and shoves a spoonful of the soup into his mouth.

Truthfully, it’s disgusting but he doesn’t have the heart to say anything about it. Everything gets better with time and, at the very least, Sooil’s soup isn’t bitter like the terrible day he had. It’s better than recalling that he failed an important exam.

Nothing lasts forever and this will pass.

Sooil will have another chance to try. Jinwook will, too.

Here, with Sooil breathing softly against his skin, watching as he inhales the soup, their worries don’t seem to make much sense.

Jinwook decides he wants this for life.

He gives in to a strange impulse.

“Hey, do you want to date me?”

Sooil looks at him like he’s insane.

* * *

“He asked me to date him,” Sooil barks out with a laugh. He rolls his eyes and glances over the back of the sofa at his roommate. Jinwook pretends he doesn’t hear him from the kitchen.

Minsoo looks between them with an incredulous look.

“And what did you say to him?” he asks, “Am I interrupting something?”

Sooil rolls his eyes at Minsoo’s question.

“He wasn’t serious,” Sooil replies. “There was probably something weird in the soup.”

Jinwook snorts.

“ _You_ made it,” he interrupts, “you’d know if there was something weird in it.”

“Listen, I don’t know how chemistry works,” Sooil argues.

Minsoo leans back against the sofa on his elbows and chuckles. He hums.

“I haven’t taken a chemistry course since high school,” he says, “but I still think you guys have the chemistry of an old married couple.” He glances at Sooil, “What if Jinwook _wasn’t_ joking?”

Sooil quickly glances at him, then to Jinwook. He quickly meets Minsoo’s eyes again.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Jinwook rounds the counter to move out to the living room. He leans against the back of the sofa, just behind Minsoo. He looks at Sooil, quietly.

“No,” he says. “What _if_ I was serious?”

The flush on Sooil’s cheeks tells him he has a chance.

* * *

They are five when they meet for the first time.

They are both children in stuffy suits at a wedding and they’re the only kids there.

Jinwook doesn’t want to be in the suit that his mother stuffed him into—he can’t really run freely around the tables in the suit. The wedding isn’t as exciting as running around the park is.

Or at least, it isn’t as exciting until Jinwook meets Sooil.

He’s thrilled at the sight of a child around his age leaning against one of the tables. Sooil is falling asleep at the table and Jinwook just wants a friend to hang out with.

Jinwook breaks away from his mother’s arms and rushes to him.

They’re kids and they don’t care about anything around them. They don’t care about the loving gazes that the bride and groom are giving one another, they don’t care about the way that all the adults are cooing at the couple. All they care about is having fun.

At the wedding, Jinwook looks at the bride and groom while he swings Sooil’s tiny hand between them and tells him, _‘when we grow up, we’re going to be just like them!’_

Five-year-old Sooil laughs at him.

* * *

It’s funny how fate works. They do end up like them.

When they grow up, they end up like the couple wedded on the night they met for the first time in their lives. Despite five-year-old Sooil’s reaction when five-year-old Jinwook proposed to a practical stranger, they end up like the couple that married on the night they met.

At twenty-five, they end up standing face to face, hand in hand, in front of the altar, vows so filled with love. At twenty-five, all they care about is one another; staring at one another with loving gazes and the sound of their friends cooing at them.

It feels like something fell into place at the moment that Jinwook takes Sooil’s hand.

It feels like, after cycling through familiarity for so many years, something final clicks to push them forward. And at this moment, Jinwook believes in forever.

Sooil looks shy when he promises that he’ll love him for as long as he breathes.

Jinwook believes they can have this forever.

**Author's Note:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/yuseokki) ♡
> 
> i honestly wrote this because i miss jinwook so much. anyway, please support up10tion's comeback.


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